Chapter 10 #2
Screams greet the announcement, and the dancers all scatter in favor of finding the best vantage point or reuniting with friends lost in the fray.
Nick’s pretty sure he recognizes some of the faces in the VIP section—there’s a couple of women he’s about ninety percent sure are WNBA players, a guy who has the face of someone who’s probably on TV somehow, and a cluster of girls in coordinated pin-up costumes who are almost definitely internet celebrities.
They’re all stunningly gorgeous, and he thinks with a wry grin how jealous some of his teammates would be if they knew where he was.
But Nick has his eyes on a different prize.
There’s a tangible buzz of anticipation through the room. He looks up. All along the balcony, people are leaning forward in their seats, wanting to get a good look at the stage. A low hum fills the air, and then it gains a rhythm. Slow, steady, pulsing.
There’s a whooshing noise, and smoke gushes out over the stage. Four silhouettes appear, walking out to take their places. The audience screams and it’s ear-splitting in the confines of the venue.
The lights go up, and Nick’s breath catches.
It turns out, the black pile of fabric Matt had texted him a picture of was a skin-tight pair of jeans and an equally tight tank top.
They’re painted with skeleton bones, glowing bright white under the blacklight.
His arms are painted too, the bodypaint bones stretching down his biceps and forearms, curling across the backs of his hands.
His face is paper-white, with UV-glowing accents across his cheeks and jawline, really accentuating the hollowed-out skull look he’s going for.
His eye sockets are blacked out and his hair is slicked back, his lips painted with black lipstick to give a sinister edge to his smile.
He looks fucking hot.
“Good evening, House of Blues!” he calls into the microphone, earning an exuberant cry from his adoring fans. “Wow, you all look incredible! Look at those costumes, holy shit!”
“You guys look amazing!” someone screams, making Matt laugh.
“Thank you! Shout out to our makeup artist Nova—they worked really hard on all this.” He gestures to himself, and then to Casey, who’s dressed as a sexy Queen of Hearts and has the elaborate makeup to match.
“Also, thanks to Kennedy who helped with the costumes. Except Spencer’s—he did his all by himself! ”
Spencer steps out from behind his drum kit just long enough to show off that he’s wearing nothing but a pair of gold sparkly hot pants, flexing his biceps to the wolf-whistles of the crowd.
“Anyway, it is the spookiest night of the year and we’re all about the treats here, baby, no tricks, so let’s get this thing moving.” With that, he glances over his shoulder and nods at Spencer, who picks up a beat for the first song.
“I can’t believe this!” Sofia screams into Nick’s ear. “This is incredible!”
“Happy Halloween, kid!” Marco replies, squeezing the back of her neck.
The band are just as electric as they were the first time Nick saw them, amped up by the energy of the crowd and the atmosphere of the room.
Matt is goofy, dancing around the stage, pulling Casey into a twirl that gets both of them tangled in mic cords and laughing as they stumble away from each other.
Between songs he looks out in the crowd, complimenting people on their costumes, and in the dark Nick can’t be sure if the singer catches sight of him but he definitely sees Matt’s eyes drift towards their section, and he hopes.
Much like the last concert, things pass by far too quickly for Nick’s liking. At the end of “Crowd Control,” Matt leans on his microphone stand, that playful smile made even more mischievous by the angles of his face paint.
“You guys have been absolutely amazing tonight, thank you so much,” he says, earning a roar of sound in response.
“We’re gonna wrap it up with these last two songs, but don’t worry, they’re fun ones.
” He pauses for more cheers, his chest heaving with exertion.
“We love Halloween because it’s about getting to be whatever the fuck you wanna be—it’s the one night of the year where all the freaks and the creeps and the funky little weirdos get to fly their flags and scream as loud as they want. So let me hear you scream, Las Vegas!”
Nick cups a hand to his mouth to yell, his throat aching from the effort.
“Hell yeah!” Matt enthuses, rocking on the balls of his toes. “This is a song about flying your freak flag all year round, and it’s called ‘Queer as in Fuck You.’ Let’s go!”
“YES!” Sofia and Bianca squeal in unison, jumping in time with the beat.
Nick throws his arms in the air, jumping along with them, closing his eyes to let Matt’s voice wash over him.
This song … it’s become Nick’s pump-up song—not that he’ll ever admit it.
It fills him with a righteous kind of energy that electrifies him down to the tips of his fingers, imagining being the kind of person who can be so bold and brazen as to stand up and put themselves out there like that.
Before a game, it makes him think viciously about what some of the guys he plays might think if they knew they were getting their ass kicked by a queer, and he carries that with him onto the ice.
It’s a damn good song, and he loses himself in it, pretending that he could be the kind of person who feels this utter disregard for the world all of the time.
After that, they put their own spin on a cover of “This Is Halloween” that has Bianca nearly fainting with excitement.
Joel does some pretty impressive scream-singing through the chorus, and when Nick cranes his neck he sees that somehow the small circle pit has filled entirely with a group of around eight Jack Skellingtons who have all banded together, along with a pretty incredible Oogie Boogie.
The Jacks have linked arms and are doing some kind of jig around Oogie, their ever-smiling faces utterly terrifying.
At the end of the song, Matt lifts his guitar in the air in triumph. “We’ll see you on the dance floor, motherfuckers!” He cheers, and then the lights all cut out at once, plunging the whole room into utter darkness.
A deep, ominous voice starts to laugh, cackling like they’re in a horror movie, and the audience is silent and breathless. The voice keeps laughing. Squinting in the pitch black, Nick can barely make out movement on stage.
And then a deep red spotlight illuminates the center of the upper balcony and everyone cranes their necks to see a DJ booth set up there, the person behind it dressed in a dark cloak and a plague-doctor mask.
The laughter fades out, and quiet piano music starts.
Immediately, several people scream the scream of someone who has recognized the song that’s playing and is very happy about it.
It sounds familiar to Nick, but he doesn’t quite pin it …
until an ethereal voice kicks in and the whole room holds its collective breath through the first couple of lines, and then suddenly he is in the middle of a crowd of people all headbanging along to “Bring Me to Life” by Evanescence.
Yup, this is definitely not like any Halloween party he’s ever been to before.